On 8 May 2026, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center confirmed that the 2025–26 La Niña has officially ended. The equatorial Pacific has shifted to ENSO-neutral. An El Niño Watch is now in effect. According to the agency’s latest diagnostic discussion, there is an 82 percent chance El Niño develops between May and July, and a 96 percent chance it persists through the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2026–27.

This is not a small piece of news. ENSO — the El Niño–Southern Oscillation — is the single most influential year-to-year climate pattern on the planet. A La Niña pulls warm water westward across the equatorial Pacific, suppressing rainfall in the Americas, intensifying Atlantic hurricane activity, and cooling the global average temperature. An El Niño does roughly the opposite. Warm water sloshes east. The jet stream shifts. The trade winds weaken. Rainfall patterns reorganise across at least three continents.

The World Meteorological Organisation is forecasting that this El Niño may strengthen into what climatologists call a “super El Niño” — a category reserved for events where central Pacific sea surface temperatures rise 2°C or more above normal. AccuWeather and several other forecasters concur. Confidence in strength is still limited by what meteorologists call the “spring predictability barrier” — the difficulty of forecasting ENSO strength during boreal spring — but the directional signal is unambiguous.

What this means in practical terms: a wetter winter for the southern United States, drier conditions across Indonesia and northern Australia (with associated bushfire risk), weaker monsoon rainfall in India, and a warmer global average temperature for 2026 and 2027. Coral reefs already reeling from the ongoing fourth global bleaching event will face additional thermal stress. East African rainfall patterns will shift, with implications for Sudan, Somalia, and Kenya.

Crucially, El Niño suppresses Atlantic hurricane activity — and amplifies Pacific cyclone activity. The 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, beginning 1 June, is forecast to be below normal. The 2026 Pacific season, particularly Eastern Pacific (Mexico’s National Meteorological Service forecasts 18–21 named storms), is forecast to be well above average. Same El Niño. Opposite effects on the two basins.

The Waypoint will track how this plays out across each of the regions affected. For now, the news is simply this: the climate is reorganising itself, on schedule, in the way ENSO does every few years. The world about to come is not the world that just ended.

— Sources: NOAA Climate Prediction Center, World Meteorological Organisation, IRI (International Research Institute for Climate and Society), AccuWeather